Complete HarpWeek Explanation:In this cartoon, circus and "freak
show" pioneer P. T. Barnum, a close personal friend of Greeley, is quoted
in the caption praising the candidate's character. The title's "What Is
It" refers to a sham perpetrated by Barnum at his American Museum, circa
1859. Feeding on the new evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin and on
anti-black prejudice, Barnum (despite being an abolitionist) billed a short,
black man as the "missing link" between apes and humans. Here, Greeley
fills that role by incorporating into his candidacy such contradictory notions
as free trade and protectionism, pro- and anti-temperance, and pro- and anti-Ku
Klux Klan. The Woolly Horse was another Barnum humbug, in which he took a horse
with curly hair, reversed it in its stall, and advertised it as a horse
"with his head where his tail should be." Its inclusion in this
cartoon underlines Greeley's alleged nature of pretending to be something that
he was not. The note attached to the horse mimics Nast's charge that the
hypocritical New York Tribune was an organ that alleged it was not an organ.